Modern day telecommunications are making the world “a global village” such that world-wide communications is substantially real-time. Current telephone companies are not only selling regular services, such as telephone or data services, but they are also aggressively marketing value-added services. One example of a value-added service involves enhanced systems for messaging, such as voice mail. A number of other value-added services attempt to converge telephone with data. One disadvantage of such services is that each service requires a unique telephone number.
Another problem with current telecommunications is experienced by people that have a variety of communications needs and responsibilities at different times. For example, mobile and remote workers have a need to be aware of messages; however, if traveling, or in a virtual office, it is quite difficult to check e-mail and faxes when they may only have a few minutes at a phone.
Current telecommunication systems typically employ servers that store and play voice messages, generate and store text messages, and provide integrated voicemail and fax mail services. One problem with such servers is that a specific telecommunications service exists through a single interface. Accordingly, users who utilize other interfaces—e.g., PSTN, Wireless, VOIP and the Internet—may be prohibited from accessing and using the telecommunications system for the desired service.
By way of illustrative example, prior art voicemail services provide a caller with an option to deposit a message when the called party does not answer the call, is out of range, or has switched off the phone. The storage of these messages is within a handset, as in U.S. Pat. No. 6,091,947, or on a system server. However, storage of the message at the system server requires that a mailbox be pre-provisioned when a user initially subscribes for the service, thereinafter a fixed storage space is allocated. This fixed storage space limits the user to the memory space provided and the user may fail to receive messages if his system quota has been filled.
Other problems with prior art telecommunications are now described. By way of example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,032,039 describes a notification message, which contains a call back number, caller ID, message type, time and date received. If the caller has to view the message, he has to dial a distinct common number provided to him by the service provider and, then, browse through the inbox to access his message. There is no direct way to view a particular message; it therefore takes much more time for a user to retrieve a specific message.
In conventional voicemail systems with roaming capability, a user is required to dial a new number from every roaming location in order to check his or her voicemail. It is therefore inconvenient for the user to remember the particular number for each location.